Re: Scary symptoms and extreme anxiety
Originally Posted by
karma12
I have been suffering foot cramping that has progressed in frequency for 18 months. It is now every day. The scarier symptom is muscle thinning on my lower legs which I noticed a few weeks ago. I have had a "normal" strength and reflex test by my GP and have a neuro referral in 3 weeks.
Most people are deficient in magnesium - a symptom is foot cramping. I had this symptom a lot before I was taking magnesium. I was taking it for something else but discovered that it sorted out the cramping too!
As Joe says; you need to lose the 'scary' dialogue. In reality, these are common symptoms..
I am going out of my mind with worry. I have lost a lot of weight,
Severe anxiety = weight loss or weight gain. I lost two stone.
My big, BIG, mistake was researching on the internet, obsessively. My symptoms don't fall neatly into any diagnosis, rather they are "suggestive" of several really scary ones!
I'm not seeing even remotely 'scary' symptoms..
I feel I am in a "sub category" of health anxiety. I am not constantly seeking reassurance for every ache and pain thinking it is the worst.
I have real symptoms awaiting a diagnosis that I cannot for the life of me think might be other than a catastrophic outcome!
To me, and this is based on my own experience of having severe health anxiety (including a mental breakdown) your health anxiety isn't a 'sub-category' - it's the primary category, and the cause of most every 'scary' symptom that's currently happening to you. Loss of muscle mass is a common age thing and your cramps can easily be sorted by taking magnesium. The rest is anxiety...
Also, 'catastrophic outcome'? Just say that you do have a physical condition.. it's 2021, not 1857. We have doctors and excellent drugs! However, nothing you've mentioned makes me think that this is anything but anxiety and common complaints which can easily be remedied with minerals or exercise..
I have been trying meditations, mindfulness, welcoming intrusive thoughts and observing them, trying to do "normal" things to retrain my mind, reminding myself to "follow the plan not the mood", but to be honest nothing is working consistently. Every minute of every day is a struggle not to body check and go on the internet.
But you are using dialogue from the F.E.A.R dictionary. What use is practicing mindfulness when you are constantly actively sending messages to your brain that you are in 'danger'? Your brain will respond by releasing all those stress hormones which make you feel terrible because you're not using them as they are designed to be used; as in fight or flight. The adrenalin. cortisol etc stays in your body and is constantly being topped up by your fearful thoughts.
Recovery from health anxiety is hard work. It requires graft and determination, and there's no time limit on it. Five minutes staring at a teabag won't cut it. At the moment you are clearly 100% convinced that there is something physically wrong with you, and that it will be 'catastrophic' so I very much doubt that you are giving 100% to what will help you out of this hole.
What you are aiming for is to understand anxiety and the effects of stress on the body (and the hundreds of unpleasant symptoms anxiety is responsible for) and acceptance that, even if you were to become ill, you would deal with it because the one thing we can control is our response when shit hits the fan- even if our initial response is a negative one.
I have been in a life-threatening situation. My life was in danger and so was my unborn baby's. And I was calm as anything throughout the entire time, and that was before the morphine! This is because the brain tends to handle what's real a lot better than what's fearfully imagined.
Your body is swimming in stress hormones. If you were able to switch your mind off your health today - it would take your body months (at least) to settle back down because the body becomes sensitised. So you have to do the relaxation therapies, and keep doing them - even when you feel horrendous. In fact, that's the very best time to be doing it because breathing deeply actively turns OFF the stress response. It goes without saying; Google is off limits - unless you can control yourself to research anxiety?
RE muscles: As we age, our muscles lose mass and shrink. It's completely natural and it takes a lot more work to build them up and maintain them. I'm in my fifties, and this is definitely the case for me.
I have read many people's stories on this forum and can identify with their pain and suffering.
That's seeking reassurance. Have you ever taken a look at the success stories section? Funnily enough, the symptom sections on here are the busiest and the people viewing the success stories is usually in single figures. I wanted to know how people got better from HA, so I wanted to read those success stories. Reassurance is a short term fix and can be as addictive as Googling. Neither requires much effort though. It's easy to write about how shit we feel and it's easy to read about how shit other people feel; it's a lot harder to actively try and control the situation we are in..
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A thought is harmless unless we believe it.